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Oh, Canada! An Earth Day Lament

Today is Earth Day. I’m not marching, or celebrating, or even planting a tree (my latest dozen hazelnuts haven’t arrived yet). But I am sending you a sobering article from Sojourners Magazine on abusive and unjust mining practices worldwide by Canadian companies.

Last year, I spent a week in Fort McMurray, the heart of Canada’s tar sands petro-state of Alberta. I reported the horrors I saw there in several posts (see here, here, here, and especially here.) And while I lamented the poisoning and cultural genocide of peaceable First Nations in Alberta, I also mourned the apparent transformation of Canada from a relatively peaceable steward of its land and people, to a cynical state committed to the destruction of God’s most precious gifts for the enrichment of the powerful. I felt like I was watching the movie “Avatar,” but in real life — with real children, parents and elders as the real victims.

Now, Rev. Emilie Teresa Smith, a Canadian Anglican priest, has detailed horrifying accounts of Canadian mining companies exploiting and poisoning the poor in less-developed countries. “What? Canadians?” she asks. “We’re supposed to be the good guys in the story. Well, not anymore.”

Please, read Rev. Smith’s article (and consider subscribing to Sojourners while you’re at it!). And for meditation and thought on this Earth Day, here’s the way she concludes her article:

“The Earth is not a thing to be bought, sold, used and destroyed. Our eternal connection to the dust is that we are dust. We are not the Creator, but frail creatures, utterly dependent on the care of the Earth, her mountains, her water, streams and deepness underground. As the psalmist reminds us, the Earth is not ours, but God’s; we live with tender mercy and grace upon her abundant belly.”

I pray that you are blessed this Earth Day, and are looking for new ways to tend and keep the garden in which God has placed you.